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- called a dog, sir.”
“Then be called ten times a donkey, and a mule, and an ass, and begone,
or I’ll clear the world of thee!”
As he said this, Ahab advanced upon him with such overbearing terrors
in his aspect, that Stubb involuntarily retreated.
“I was never served so before without giving a hard blow for it,”
muttered Stubb, as he found himself descending the cabin-scuttle. “It’s
very queer. Stop, Stubb; somehow, now, I don’t well know whether to go
back and strike him, or—what’s that?—down here on my knees and pray for
him? Yes, that was the thought coming up in me; but it would be the
first time I ever _did_ pray. It’s queer; very queer; and he’s queer
too; aye, take him fore and aft, he’s about the queerest old man Stubb
ever sailed with. How he flashed at me!—his eyes like powder-pans! is
he mad? Anyway there’s something on his mind, as sure as there must be
something on a deck when it cracks. He aint in his bed now, either,
more than three hours out of the twenty-four; and he don’t sleep then.
Didn’t that Dough-Boy, the steward, tell me that of a morning he always
finds the old man’s hammock clothes all rumpled and tumbled, and the
sheets down at the foot, and the coverlid almost tied into knots, and
the pillow a sort of frightful hot, as though a baked brick had been on
it? A hot old man! I guess he’s got what some folks ashore call a
conscience; it’s a kind of Tic-Dolly-row they say—worse nor a
toothache. Well, well; I don’t know what it is, but the Lord keep me
from catching it. He’s full of riddles; I wonder what he goes into the
after hold for, every night, as Dough-Boy tells me he suspects; what’s
that for, I should like to know? Who’s made appointments with him in
the hold? Ain’t that queer, now? But there’s no telling, it’s the old
game—Here goes for a snooze. Damn me, it’s worth a fellow’s while to be
born into the world, if only to fall right asleep. And now that I think
of it, that’s about the first thing babies do, and that’s a sort of
queer, too. Damn me, but all things are queer, come to think of ’em.
But that’s against my principles. Think not, is my eleventh
commandment; and sleep when you can, is my twelfth—So here goes again.
But how’s that? didn’t he call me a dog? blazes! he called me ten times
a donkey, and piled a lot of jackasses on top of _that!_ He might as
well have kicked me, and done with it. Maybe he _did_ kick me, and I
didn’t observe it, I was so taken all aback with his brow, somehow. It
flashed like a bleached bone. What the devil’s the matter with me? I
don’t stand right on my legs. Coming afoul of that old man has a sort
of turned me wrong side out. By the Lord, I must have been dreaming,
though—How? how? how?—but the only way’s to stash it; so here goes to
hammock again; and in the morning, I’ll see how this plaguey juggling
thinks over by daylight.”
CHAPTER 30. The Pipe.
When Stubb had departed, Ahab stood for a while leaning over the
bulwarks; and then, as had been usual with him of late, calling a
sailor of the watch, he sent him below for his ivory stool, and also
his pipe. Lighting the pipe at the binnacle lamp and planting the stool
on the weather side of the deck, he sat and smoked.
In old Norse times, the thrones of the sea-loving Danish kings were
fabricated, saith tradition, of the tusks of the narwhale. How could
one look at Ahab then, seated on that tripod of bones, without
bethinking him of the royalty it symbolized? For a Khan of the plank,
and a king of the sea, and a great lord of Leviathans was Ahab.
Some moments passed, during which the thick vapor came from his mouth
in quick and constant puffs, which blew back again into his face. “How
now,” he soliloquized at last, withdrawing the tube, “this smoking no
longer soothes. Oh, my pipe! hard must it go with me if thy charm be
gone! Here have I been unconsciously toiling, not pleasuring—aye, and
ignorantly smoking to windward all the while; to windward, and with
such nervous whiffs, as if, like the dying whale, my final jets were
the strongest and fullest of trouble. What business have I with this
pipe? This thing that is meant for sereneness, to send up mild white
vapors among mild white hairs, not among torn iron-grey locks like
mine. I’ll smoke no more—”
He tossed the still lighted pipe into the sea. The fire hissed in the
waves; the same instant the ship shot by the bubble the sinking pipe
made. With slouched hat, Ahab lurchingly paced the planks.
CHAPTER 31. Queen Mab.
Next morning Stubb accosted Flask.
“Such a queer dream, King-Post, I never had. You know the old man’s
ivory leg, well I dreamed he kicked me with it; and when I tried to
kick back, upon my soul, my little man, I kicked my leg right off! And
then, presto! Ahab seemed a pyramid, and I, like a blazing fool, kept
kicking at it. But what was still more curious, Flask—you know how
curious all dreams are—through all this rage that I was in, I somehow
seemed to be thinking to myself, that after all, it was not much of an
insult, that kick from Ahab. ‘Why,’ thinks I, ‘what’s the row? It’s not
a real leg, only a false leg.’ And there’s a mighty difference between
a living thump and a dead thump. That’s what makes a blow from the
hand, Flask, fifty times more savage to bear than a blow from a cane.
The living member—that makes the living insult, my little man. And
thinks I to myself all the while, mind, while I was stubbing my silly
toes against that cursed pyramid—so confoundedly contradictory was it
all, all the while, I say, I was thinking to myself, ‘what’s his leg
now, but a cane—a whalebone cane. Yes,’ thinks I, ‘it was only a
playful cudgelling—in fact, only a whaleboning that he gave me—not a
base kick. Besides,’ thinks I, ‘look at it once; why, the end of it—the
foot part—what a small sort of end it is; whereas, if a broad footed
farmer kicked me, _there’s_ a devilish broad insult. But this insult is
whittled down to a point only.’ But now comes the greatest joke of the
dream, Flask. While I was battering away at the pyramid, a sort of
badger-haired old merman, with a hump on his back, takes me by the
shoulders, and slews me round. ‘What are you ’bout?’ says he. Slid!
man, but I was frightened. Such a phiz! But, somehow, next moment I was
over the fright. ‘What am I about?’ says I at last. ‘And what business
is that of yours, I should like to know, Mr. Humpback? Do _you_ want a
kick?’ By the lord, Flask, I had no sooner said that, than he turned
round his stern to me, bent over, and dragging up a lot of seaweed he
had for a clout—what do you think, I saw?—why thunder alive, man, his
stern was stuck full of marlinspikes, with the points out. Says I, on
second thoughts, ‘I guess I won’t kick you, old fellow.’ ‘Wise Stubb,’
said he, ‘wise Stubb;’ and kept muttering it all the time, a sort of
eating of his own gums like a chimney hag. Seeing he wasn’t going to
stop saying over his ‘wise Stubb, wise Stubb,’ I thought I might as
well fall to kicking the pyramid again. But I had only just lifted my
foot for it, when he roared out, ‘Stop that kicking!’ ‘Halloa,’ says I,
‘what’s the matter now, old fellow?’ ‘Look ye here,’ says he; ‘let’s
argue the insult. Captain Ahab kicked ye, didn’t he?’ ‘Yes, he did,’
says I—‘right _here_ it was.’ ‘Very good,’ says he—‘he used his ivory
leg, didn’t he?’ ‘Yes, he did,’ says I. ‘Well then,’ says he, ‘wise
Stubb, what have you to complain of? Didn’t he kick with right good
will? it wasn’t a common pitch pine leg he kicked with, was it? No, you
were kicked by a great man, and with a beautiful ivory leg, Stubb. It’s
an honor; I consider it an honor. Listen, wise Stubb. In old England
the greatest lords think it great glory to be slapped by a queen, and
made garter-knights of; but, be _your_ boast, Stubb, that ye were
kicked by old Ahab, and made a wise man of.